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Linux Documentation Project

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The Linux Documentation Project (LDP) is a dormant all-volunteer project that maintains a large collection of GNU and Linux -related documentation and publishes the collection online. It began as a way for hackers to share their documentation with each other and with their users, and for users to share documentation with each other. Its documents tend to be oriented towards experienced users such as professional system administrators, but it also contains tutorials for beginners.

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32-532: The LDP originally began as an FTP site in 1992, but it went on the World Wide Web at MetaLab in 1993. It is believed to have been the first Linux related website ever. Today, the LDP serves over 475 documents contributed by even more authors. About a dozen of them are book length, and most of those are available in print from major technical publishers including O'Reilly . On 1 September 2008, LDP started

64-427: A wiki to allow a better interaction with the authors and the users, with a plan to convert documentation to the wiki format and a list of pages to be ported. Presently (as of July 2020), the LDP is no longer active; the last entry under "Recent Changes" dates from 2016-01-29, the last guide inserted from Mar 2014. The LDP published many "HOWTO" documents that instruct a user on the specific steps to take to achieve

96-438: A desired goal. These goals are sometimes very specific, such as configuring a particular modem, and sometimes very broad, such as how to administer a network for an ISP . Very broad topics were covered in the guides, which are book-length documents, usually on broad subjects such as security or networking. The LDP also published Frequently Asked Question ( FAQ ) lists, man pages and other documents, as well as two webzines ,

128-431: A network sniffing attack . If the information provided by the client is accepted by the server, the server will send a greeting to the client and the session will commence. If the server supports it, users may log in without providing login credentials, but the same server may authorize only limited access for such sessions. A host that provides an FTP service may provide anonymous FTP access. Users typically log into

160-572: A new type of passive mode. FTP may run in active or passive mode, which determines how the data connection is established. (This sense of "mode" is different from that of the MODE command in the FTP protocol.) Both modes were updated in September 1998 to support IPv6 . Further changes were introduced to the passive mode at that time, updating it to extended passive mode . The server responds over

192-583: A remote file timestamp, there's MDTM command. Some servers (and clients) support nonstandard syntax of the MDTM command with two arguments, that works the same way as MFMT FTP login uses normal username and password scheme for granting access. The username is sent to the server using the USER command, and the password is sent using the PASS command. This sequence is unencrypted "on the wire", so may be vulnerable to

224-459: A username and password may be found in the browsers' documentation (e.g., Firefox and Internet Explorer ). By default, most web browsers use passive (PASV) mode, which more easily traverses end-user firewalls. Some variation has existed in how different browsers treat path resolution in cases where there is a non-root home directory for a user. Most common download managers can receive files hosted on FTP servers, while some of them also give

256-575: A vulnerability to the following problems: FTP does not encrypt its traffic; all transmissions are in clear text, and usernames, passwords, commands and data can be read by anyone able to perform packet capture ( sniffing ) on the network. This problem is common to many of the Internet Protocol specifications (such as SMTP , Telnet , POP and IMAP ) that were designed prior to the creation of encryption mechanisms such as TLS or SSL. Common solutions to this problem include: FTP over SSH

288-537: Is an extension to the FTP standard that allows clients to request FTP sessions to be encrypted. This is done by sending the "AUTH TLS" command. The server has the option of allowing or denying connections that do not request TLS. This protocol extension is defined in RFC   4217 . Implicit FTPS is an outdated standard for FTP that required the use of a SSL or TLS connection. It was specified to use different ports than plain FTP. The SSH file transfer protocol (chronologically

320-627: Is only recommended for small file transfers from a server, due to limitations compared to dedicated client software. It does not support SFTP . Both the native file managers for KDE on Linux ( Dolphin and Konqueror ) support FTP as well as SFTP. On Android , the My Files file manager on Samsung Galaxy has a built-in FTP and SFTP client. For a long time, most common web browsers were able to retrieve files hosted on FTP servers, although not all of them had support for protocol extensions such as FTPS . When an FTP—rather than an HTTP— URL

352-408: Is still in use in mainframe and minicomputer file transfer applications. Data transfer can be done in any of three modes: Most contemporary FTP clients and servers do not implement MODE B or MODE C; FTP clients and servers for mainframe and minicomputer operating systems are the exception to that. Some FTP software also implements a DEFLATE -based compressed mode, sometimes called "Mode Z" after

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384-464: Is supplied, the accessible contents on the remote server are presented in a manner that is similar to that used for other web content. Google Chrome removed FTP support entirely in Chrome 88, also affecting other Chromium -based browsers such as Microsoft Edge . Firefox 88 disabled FTP support by default, with Firefox 90 dropping support entirely. FireFTP is a discontinued browser extension that

416-401: Is the practice of tunneling a normal FTP session over a Secure Shell connection. Because FTP uses multiple TCP connections (unusual for a TCP/IP protocol that is still in use), it is particularly difficult to tunnel over SSH. With many SSH clients, attempting to set up a tunnel for the control channel (the initial client-to-server connection on port 21) will protect only that channel; when data

448-574: Is transferred, the FTP software at either end sets up new TCP connections (data channels) and thus have no confidentiality or integrity protection . Otherwise, it is necessary for the SSH client software to have specific knowledge of the FTP protocol, to monitor and rewrite FTP control channel messages and autonomously open new packet forwardings for FTP data channels. Software packages that support this mode include: FTP over SSH should not be confused with SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). Explicit FTPS

480-619: The Linux Gazette and Linux Focus . Much of the LDP collection is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL). Many other licenses are also used, as long as they are freely distributable. Current policy recommends the GFDL. Linux Network Administrator's Guide is one book in the series. File Transfer Protocol Early research and development: Merging the networks and creating

512-554: The URI prefix " ftp:// ". In 2021, FTP support was dropped by Google Chrome and Firefox , two major web browser vendors, due to it being superseded by the more secure SFTP and FTPS; although neither of them have implemented the newer protocols. The original specification for the File Transfer Protocol was written by Abhay Bhushan and published as RFC   114 on 16 April 1971. Until 1980, FTP ran on NCP ,

544-541: The FTP client to the server. This is widely used by modern FTP clients. Another approach is for the NAT to alter the values of the PORT command, using an application-level gateway for this purpose. While transferring data over the network, five data types are defined: Note these data types are commonly called "modes", although ambiguously that word is also used to refer to active-vs-passive communication mode (see above), and

576-587: The Internet towards internal hosts. For NATs, an additional complication is that the representation of the IP addresses and port number in the PORT command refer to the internal host's IP address and port, rather than the public IP address and port of the NAT. There are two approaches to solve this problem. One is that the FTP client and FTP server use the PASV command, which causes the data connection to be established from

608-492: The Internet: Commercialization, privatization, broader access leads to the modern Internet: Examples of Internet services: The File Transfer Protocol ( FTP ) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network . FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data connections between

640-447: The SSH file transfer protocol as well. Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) is a simple, lock-step FTP that allows a client to get a file from or put a file onto a remote host. One of its primary uses is in the early stages of booting from a local area network , because TFTP is very simple to implement. TFTP lacks security and most of the advanced features offered by more robust file transfer protocols such as File Transfer Protocol. TFTP

672-463: The URL ftp://public.ftp-servers.example.com/mydirectory/myfile.txt represents the file myfile.txt from the directory mydirectory on the server public.ftp-servers.example.com as an FTP resource. The URL ftp://user001:secretpassword@private.ftp-servers.example.com/mydirectory/myfile.txt adds a specification of the username and password that must be used to access this resource. More details on specifying

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704-974: The client and the server. FTP users may authenticate themselves with a plain-text sign-in protocol, normally in the form of a username and password, but can connect anonymously if the server is configured to allow it. For secure transmission that protects the username and password, and encrypts the content, FTP is often secured with SSL/TLS ( FTPS ) or replaced with SSH File Transfer Protocol (SFTP). The first FTP client applications were command-line programs developed before operating systems had graphical user interfaces , and are still shipped with most Windows , Unix , and Linux operating systems. Many dedicated FTP clients and automation utilities have since been developed for desktops , servers, mobile devices, and hardware, and FTP has been incorporated into productivity applications such as HTML editors and file managers . An FTP client used to be commonly integrated in web browsers , where file servers are browsed with

736-511: The command that enables it. This mode was described in an Internet Draft , but not standardized. GridFTP defines additional modes, MODE E and MODE X, as extensions of MODE B. More recent implementations of FTP support the Modify Fact: Modification Time (MFMT) command, which allows a client to adjust that file attribute remotely, enabling the preservation of that attribute when uploading files. To retrieve

768-501: The control connection with three-digit status codes in ASCII with an optional text message. For example, "200" (or "200 OK") means that the last command was successful. The numbers represent the code for the response and the optional text represents a human-readable explanation or request (e.g. <Need account for storing file>). An ongoing transfer of file data over the data connection can be aborted using an interrupt message sent over

800-435: The control connection. FTP needs two ports (one for sending and one for receiving) because it was originally designed to operate on top of Network Control Protocol (NCP), which was a simplex protocol that utilized two port addresses , establishing two connections, for two-way communications. An odd and an even port were reserved for each application layer application or protocol. The standardization of TCP and UDP reduced

832-424: The interface to retrieve the files hosted on FTP servers. DownloadStudio allows not only download a file from FTP server but also view the list of files on a FTP server. LibreOffice declared its FTP support deprecated from 7.4 release, this was later removed in 24.2 release. FTP was not designed to be a secure protocol, and has many security weaknesses. In May 1999, the authors of RFC   2577 listed

864-583: The modes set by the FTP protocol MODE command (see below). For text files (TYPE A and TYPE E), three different format control options are provided, to control how the file would be printed: These formats were mainly relevant to line printers ; most contemporary FTP clients/servers only support the default format control of N. File organization is specified using the STRU command. The following file structures are defined in section 3.1.1 of RFC959: Most contemporary FTP clients and servers only support STRU F. STRU R

896-415: The need for the use of two simplex ports for each application down to one duplex port, but the FTP protocol was never altered to only use one port, and continued using two for backwards compatibility. FTP normally transfers data by having the server connect back to the client, after the PORT command is sent by the client. This is problematic for both NATs and firewalls, which do not allow connections from

928-467: The predecessor of TCP/IP . The protocol was later replaced by a TCP/IP version, RFC   765 (June 1980) and RFC   959 (October 1985), the current specification. Several proposed standards amend RFC   959 , for example RFC   1579 (February 1994) enables Firewall-Friendly FTP (passive mode), RFC   2228 (June 1997) proposes security extensions, RFC   2428 (September 1998) adds support for IPv6 and defines

960-464: The second of the two protocols abbreviated SFTP) transfers files and has a similar command set for users, but uses the Secure Shell protocol (SSH) to transfer files. Unlike FTP, it encrypts both commands and data, preventing passwords and sensitive information from being transmitted openly over the network. It cannot interoperate with FTP software, though some FTP client software offers support for

992-505: The service with an 'anonymous' (lower-case and case-sensitive in some FTP servers) account when prompted for user name. Although users are commonly asked to send their email address instead of a password, no verification is actually performed on the supplied data. Many FTP hosts whose purpose is to provide software updates will allow anonymous logins. Many file managers tend to have FTP access implemented, such as File Explorer (formerly Windows Explorer) on Microsoft Windows . This client

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1024-460: Was designed as a full-featured FTP client to be run within Firefox , but when Firefox dropped support for FTP the extension developer recommended using Waterfox . Some browsers, such as the text-based Lynx , still support FTP. FTP URL syntax is described in RFC   1738 , taking the form: ftp://[user[:password]@]host[:port]/[url-path] (the bracketed parts are optional). For example,

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